They're the only one's in the countrywho have the tire I want in stock, At least they say they have it, and their prices are way low. But their log in page is confounding and so is their live help line.
Am I wasting my time with them? Have any of you dealt with them?
Thanks,
Ben

I've noticed that everybicycletire.com doesn't have every bicycle tire, for one thing. Maybe they have all the common roadie tires or something, but they don't have the Cheng Shin/ Pyramid tires that Niagara does. Which wouldn't bug me if it was "Selectbicycletire" or "bestbicycletire" or something, but when you call it "everybicycletire", you dang better have ALL of them, especially the common cheap ones.

__________________
"be careful this rando stuff is addictive and dan's the 'pusher'."

I've noticed that everybicycletire.com doesn't have every bicycle tire, for one thing. Maybe they have all the common roadie tires or something, but they don't have the Cheng Shin/ Pyramid tires that Niagara does. Which wouldn't bug me if it was "Selectbicycletire" or "bestbicycletire" or something, but when you call it "everybicycletire", you dang better have ALL of them, especially the common cheap ones.

They:
- immediately charge your credit card.
- Wait two weeks to tell you they are out of stock, but don't refund your money.
- Don't respond to emails.
- Phone calls are either:
-- answered by a person who promises someone will call back (but never does).
-- answered by a machine during business hours.

Exact timeline of events:

17 Nov 08 - Placed website order

18 nov 08 - My credit card was billed

30 Nov 08 - I received an email stating the items were out of stock. From the website:
"To ensure the highest levels of integrity and customer service, we cancel all orders
we cannot fill and immediately refund all charges."

05 dec 08 - I sent an email stating I wanted the order canceled and refunded.
I never received a response.

13 dec 08 - I sent an email stating I wanted the order canceled and refunded.
I never received a response.

20 dec 08 - I called 888 268-6408 and a person answered and took down my
information and promised someone would call back. No one ever called.

23 dec 08 - I called 888 268-6408 at 11am their time and got a machine.

23 dec 08 - I called my credit card company and filed a dispute on the charge.

Note that I was checking my credit account online and never received a refund.

I've heard similar stories since then.
I did call ahead to make sure they had my tires in stock last summer. They said "no but try back in September". I did and they had them and I got them.
I might have been lucky. Call to check inventory before ordering, I've heard several complaints.

Thank you for the opportunity to write a little bit about us.
Every Bicycle Tire is less than 2 years old at the time of this writing. Our business model is to provide tires, rims, wheels and hubs in a pleasant shopping environment and to become experts on them. Currently we have over 500 different tires on the website from really good manufacturers. We have a great selection and while we don't have "Every Bicycle Tire" we do have "Every Bicycle Tire Size" and we are always adding more. Our website has over 1500 different tires, rims, hubs and wheels making it pretty comprehensive. Anytime we hear of a customer who has had an experience not in keeping with our customer service goals, we address it. Each month we get better at what we do and each month we learn from our customers. When we started, we charged credit cards at the point of sale for security reasons since we don't keep credit card numbers. But when we see that our customers are so motivated to write about it, we changed it. Now we charge the card at the time the product ships give or take 24 hours. We still don't keep credit card numbers and this way everyone stays safer. Also, we have added an 800 number to call for product availability.

No excuses, I will personally call anyone who has a problem or concern and even give out my cell phone number. For the person who had to get a chargeback, we offer a coupon good for a free set of tires and a vey sincere apology.

Thanks for logging on to explain this but your answer raises a number of questions:

- Are you saying that your website does not show real-time availability? That the only way for a customer to determine if you are in stock is to call the 800-number?

- And, are you also saying that if you are not able to ship immediately, you hold the customer's credit card number in an unencrypted form until you are ready to ship, and then you destroy the credit card number?

Your decision to not charge the customer until the product is shipped is a good answer. The other implications of your email raise questions that are worth considering. It makes it sound as if I can order something from the site; you guys get my credit card number, sit on it until you get in stock, then you charge the card, destroy the number, and ship the product. Is that what you meant to imply?

All product is assumed in stock and ready for delivery unless we find out otherwise from our stocking suppliers and any inventory we have is real-time. Given the recent spike in cycling related purchases, people are finding things stocked out all across the cycling spectrum. We get regular updates from our stocking partners. The 800 number we provide serves two purposes, one product availability and two, we get to talk to the person and really help them make the right purchase. I don't know if you can tell from our website, but we do want people to call during our hours of operation because we know that if we can talk to someone in person, we increase the chance of a sale. Take a look at http://www.everybicycletire.com/SendEmail.asp . We have expanded hours of operation, no one else offers this and this is why we think we are selling so much now.

We use state of the art order processing software called AspDotNetStoreFront. Do some research and you'll find it is the best software for what we do on the market today. It is so good, that McDonalds uses it on their website. When a customer makes a purchase, the credit card details are given to our credit card processor who stores the encrypted details. This is normal. What we do different is that we program the shopping cart not to keep the numbers after the sale. We only "Authorize" the card at the point of sale and we have 30 days after that to "Capture" the funds. Our card processor will finish processing the credit card only when we send in the signal to do so. The processor allows us to make refunds anytime up until 90 days after the purchase. When we "Authorize" the card, we are given a transaction code from the processor. That code is what our processor uses to recognize any future commands from our shopping cart, either for a capture or refund.

If a customer orders and the product is out of stock, we can only hold on the to the authorization for 30 days after which time we must call the customer and ask for the number again. It is for this very reason that we used to authorize and capture funds at the point of sale (because of the fact we must interact with the customer again for out of stock orders). Given the high number of stock outs occurring everywhere, this became a problem, but since we are able to do a better job now than ever before, we don’t mind calling the customer again if we have to. Besides, no one seems to mind and everyone likes the fact we don’t keep the credit card numbers.

Hopefully this explains it better. Customer’s credit card numbers are not kept by us and the credit card processors we deal with are the same ones everyone else has to use. We wouldn’t be able to sleep at night thinking we were targets of hackers, so we decided to take this step. Only a handful of people will ever have to be contacted by us to complete a transaction otherwise, things go pretty seamlessly. Thank you for your questions.

".........We use state of the art order processing software called AspDotNetStoreFront. Do some research and you'll find it is the best software for what we do on the market today. It is so good, that McDonalds uses it on their website. When a customer makes a purchase, the credit card details are given to our credit card processor who stores the encrypted details.................."

I just checked the EBT site to see what they had for wheels. After walking around their site for a while, here is my advice to them if they want to make someone like me happy:

-Give a LOT more information about the products you are selling. Some of their wheelsets are sold without info about what kind of hub is in it. Some are sold with the name of the rim maker, but not the model. Please, please give us the tech info on the hubs/rims. How wide are the rims, for example, is pretty darn important information. In almost no cases is there any info about spokes. Many sites have a picture of a cross-section of the rim; that is a nice thing. And without telling me what model rim it is, I have no way to go to another site to find out.

There are plenty of places on-line to buy bad stuff. Many of those places hide this by giving sketchy information about what they sell. And so, I have to assume if the information was not given out, it is because the seller thinks that information might kill the sale. Needless to say, I would not spend my money that way.

Please, please give us complete information to make a purchase. I cannot tell you how many times I have chickened out of a sale at the last second because I just did not feel confident I knew what I was buying.

If you think all the technical stuff will clutter up the page, you can always have a link to the real information.

So, at the risk of sounding hostile, for now I have to assume the wheels you sell are junk.

I just checked the EBT site to see what they had for wheels. After walking around their site for a while, here is my advice to them if they want to make someone like me happy:

-Give a LOT more information about the products you are selling. Some of their wheelsets are sold without info about what kind of hub is in it. Some are sold with the name of the rim maker, but not the model. Please, please give us the tech info on the hubs/rims. How wide are the rims, for example, is pretty darn important information. In almost no cases is there any info about spokes. Many sites have a picture of a cross-section of the rim; that is a nice thing. And without telling me what model rim it is, I have no way to go to another site to find out.

There are plenty of places on-line to buy bad stuff. Many of those places hide this by giving sketchy information about what they sell. And so, I have to assume if the information was not given out, it is because the seller thinks that information might kill the sale. Needless to say, I would not spend my money that way.

Please, please give us complete information to make a purchase. I cannot tell you how many times I have chickened out of a sale at the last second because I just did not feel confident I knew what I was buying.

If you think all the technical stuff will clutter up the page, you can always have a link to the real information.

So, at the risk of sounding hostile, for now I have to assume the wheels you sell are junk.

jim

EBTIRE, I know you are reading this. The above post is probably the best advice you will ever receive to help make your business a success. I agree with it 100%.
You must assume you are selling to a very knowlegable customer base that knows exactly what they want, and are just looking for the best source to buy from.
Dan

They:
- immediately charge your credit card.
- Wait two weeks to tell you they are out of stock, but don't refund your money.
- Don't respond to emails.
- Phone calls are either:
-- answered by a person who promises someone will call back (but never does).
-- answered by a machine during business hours.

Exact timeline of events:

17 Nov 08 - Placed website order

18 nov 08 - My credit card was billed

30 Nov 08 - I received an email stating the items were out of stock. From the website:
"To ensure the highest levels of integrity and customer service, we cancel all orders
we cannot fill and immediately refund all charges."

05 dec 08 - I sent an email stating I wanted the order canceled and refunded.
I never received a response.

13 dec 08 - I sent an email stating I wanted the order canceled and refunded.
I never received a response.

20 dec 08 - I called 888 268-6408 and a person answered and took down my
information and promised someone would call back. No one ever called.

23 dec 08 - I called 888 268-6408 at 11am their time and got a machine.

23 dec 08 - I called my credit card company and filed a dispute on the charge.

Note that I was checking my credit account online and never received a refund.

Here is the update from my previous post quoted above:

28 dec 08: Email from EBT: "We have received your issue and we will work on it as soon as possible."

30 dec 08: TWO emails from EBT both saying: "We have completed your support issue."

18 jan 09: Email from my credit card company, summarized as:
"We contacted them to give them the opportunity to provide any additional information. As of today they have not given us the information we need to resolve the matter. Therefore, we will issue a credit which will be reflected on your next statement."

I just checked the website of my credit card company, and confirmed that my CC did apply a credit to my account as of today. Going back to November, there is no evidence EBT ever attempted to refund my money.

Sorry EBT, but I would not order from you again if you were giving your stuff away. There are just too many *reliable* vendors out there to waste time on slipshod (non)service like yours. You had TWO MONTHS to do the right thing. There is no excuse for that!

Our apologies. Your concern is exactly why we changed our billing practices. When a customer initiates a chargeback, we don't contest it. This is why your card issuer gave the response they did. Chargebacks never bring anything positive and they cost money too. To prevent chargebacks, businesses have to issue timely refunds. This was an area we needed to bring in line with the customer expectations and with what other websites do. Any customers with similar concerns can call our business phone number on the website and we will be happy to discuss our order cycle process.

We have only to look in our helpdesk to see we have experienced growing pains. And while our Help Desk software is supposedly top shelf, it seems to confound people from time to time. Our webmaster will look into making it even more user friendly.

Going forward, we see the challenge of getting ready for spring. For the last 20 months we have been growing the website business and sales double every six months. But we didn’t pay as much attention to running the customer service aspect of it as well as we should have. So we have circled the wagons and will concentrate on making the customer happy. For starters, we now send a courtesy email before the product ships. Arrangements with our suppliers have been improved and we have better access to the most up to date stock levels. Same day shipping is now a reality for many of the tires we offer. When a refund needs to be made, our motto will be, “the fastest refund on the net”. All the obstacles that have kept us from doing the best possible job are being overcome. We are confident our history of helping people will outshine the occasional glitches brought to light in this forum.

It is customary for us offer a free set of tires of the customers choice with free shipping when issues like these arise. It's never comfortable to be scolded publicly so we look at posts like these and try to turn them into opportunities to find out how to do a better job and to look for ways to improve the customer experience. The suggestion to add more information with hub specifications is taken seriously. We anticipate this will be one of the things we do when we start working on the website again after the March rush. Creating some sort of comparison grid for the tires, rims and hubs would be great for all cyclists. Plus it would make deciding what to get easier. For now, the hubs are either American Classic or Velocity branded Novatech or Chosen hubs. Nothing we sell on the website is cheap. We started the website with Schwalbe and Velocity because of the quality, and because the companies produce product that solves problems. Both companies have seen sales skyrocket in the last two years and we are literally hanging on for the ride. Schwalbe and Velocity are very easy to work with too.

We bring value to the cycling community, which gets overlooked at times like this. For example; many people come to our website and sign up to get the newsletter but don’t buy anything. In Internet terms this is the visitors way of saying “thank you”. We know that many people will use our website to make a purchase decision and subsequently go into a bike shop and order. We planned on this and we encourage it. But one half of America doesn’t live near a bike shop and the only way they can get quality product is through an aggregator like us. Our supplier Hutchinson with the outrageously nice Gold Medal winning MTB tires has never dropped shipped to the end user in its’ 100 year history until we convinced them to. A customer from Nevada ordered a pair the other day and until we came along, the customer would have only been able to cull through the other websites who only carry “popular” product. Arrow Racing has never drop shipped to customers until now either. Our deal with all of our suppliers/ manufacturers who drop ship for us, is that we will carry all their products and will honor the MSRP. This is why they like us so much. People finally have a chance to see entire collections in relation to other manufacturers offerings in a pleasant, logically laid out environment. The “About Us” page on our website outlines some of this.

Notice that we have a ratings system on the website for tires and over time, we will fill it up. Our website isn’t going to be built out just from our efforts, we have riders trying tires and who have agreed to critique them. Theirs and yours input is what we want. We want to be a cycling reference resource and to do that we need constant input from all the cycling niches. Look for us to contribute much in the way Sheldon Brown did. Although we could never replicate what he did, we will do what we can to add to the body of knowledge about bicycle tires, rims, wheels and hubs plus the companies who produce them.

For those who read this, our goals are your goals. As we at EBTire progress to phase two of our build out, look for us to improve everything.